The Case of Bigg Market, Newcastle Upon Tyne

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Heritage as a Vehicle for Development: The case of Bigg Market, Newcastle upon Tyne

Loes Veldpaus and John Pendlebury

School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK doi:10.1080/02697459.2019.1637168

Abstract: In this paper we examine the way conservation-planning has changed since the global economic crisis in Newcastle upon Tyne (UK), where austerity is still an all- consuming issue. Focusing upon a recent project around the Bigg Market, a historic public space, we map the new ‘conservation-planning assemblage’ where ‘other-than- public' forms of management have taken hold. We identify impacts of austerity, deregulation and a smaller state ideology, and show how the agency of heritage assets and narratives in urban context is focussed on economic performance and competitiveness. Within the conservation-planning assemblage, roles and responsibilities have changed, and we reflect on the impact this has on conservation policy and practice.

Keywords: urban governance; heritage; conservation-planning; austerity, Business Improvement District; Newcastle upon Tyne

Bigg Market Banter

Mentioning to someone in Newcastle that Bigg Market is the case study we are working on is typically met with a smile followed by raised eyebrows, a wink, or a ‘must be interesting field work…’. The Bigg Market in Newcastle upon Tyne (England, UK) connotes the city’s urban nightlife, as a place with undercurrents of violence, associated with a drinking culture, and a classed and gendered sense of place (Nicholls, 2017, p. 125). As the market area of medieval Newcastle, there is a long history to this, but the explicit connotation has been strengthened in recent history. As Hollands (2016) states in his chapter revisiting 20 years of urban night life research “As a sociologist, living in Newcastle in the early ’90s, I was intrigued by the constant stream of negative press coverage of nightlife in the city, particularly the area called the Bigg Market.” Throughout the 1980s and 1990s this area slowly became the heart of Newcastle ‘party city’, which was turned into a rebranding strategy for a city in need of post-industrial uplift (Madanipour, 2009; Wharton, Fenwick, & Fawcett, 2010; Hollands, 2015). By 2006 its role in the night-time economy had become well established (Newcastle City Council, 2006).This rebranding led to a boost in the area’s economy, but was also central to creating its reputation as a place for excess drinking, further

1 mythologised by series such as Geordie Shore and Bigg Market Banter (‘Bigg Market Banter’, 2010; ‘Geordie Shore’, 2011). However, the Bigg Market area is also considered to be a significant place in Newcastle’s urban history, and its built environment is seen as a testimony to that. Together with the “New Castle” and St Nicholas Cathedral, it is a visible remnant of Newcastle’s medieval history. It is part of Newcastle’s Central Conservation Area and valued for its medieval morphological patterns of the markets, burgage plots, chares (small lanes), yards and related permeability, as well as the intricacy of the rich and eclectic architecture (North East Civic Trust, 1996; Pendlebury, 1999; Conzen, 2004, pp. 108–115; Newcastle City Council, 2010b; North of England Civic Trust, 2016). In addition, about half of the buildings along the Bigg Market, Cloth Market, and Groat Market are covered by local listings or Grade II and II* national listings. At present these qualities do not define the area. Rather, the medieval structure, talked about as a ‘hidden gem’, is under pressure, vulnerable to degeneration as much as it is to potential regeneration. This paper focuses upon how conservation planning and heritage have been discursively represented and operationalised in the process of ‘revamping’ the Bigg Market. We look at how heritage narratives are selected, how heritage funding is used and how the conservation-planning assemblage (Pendlebury, 2013; Pendlebury et al., 2019) changes. Looking at this within the wider context of the decade since the 2008 financial crisis, the first part of the paper focuses on issues of integrated conservation and urban planning partnerships in the context of austerity and deregulation. We then examine and discuss the workings of the changes to conservation-planning in English policy and practice in the context of Newcastle, and in particular the Bigg Market case. We consider this case illustrative for the post-crisis context as it piloted a new governance arrangement for conservation- planning. Newcastle’s Local Planning Authority did not have resources or in-house capacity to apply for funding to pursue the improvement of Bigg Market and NE1 Ltd., the Business Improvement District (BID) Company for the NE1 (city centre) postcode stepped into this vacuum. The role of the BID Company in this process is specific and novel, but with over 300 BIDs in the UK (Turner, 2017, chap. 3) and about 80 per cent covering city centre locations, they have become common players in the urban governance of historic urban cores, and their interest and importance in conservation- planning is growing (Trends Business Research, Pomegranate Seeds, & Middlesex University, 2016). We followed the process of the ongoing public realm scheme for the Bigg Market by means of a critical analysis of a series of expert interviews (2016-2018) with key actors in the formal process of the Bigg Market project, through contextualising documentary data, supported by field notes drawn from observations in various project meetings and onsite visits. Using these critical readings, the paper aims to conceptualise the changes to conservation-planning practice and how the role of heritage is changing in the conservation-planning assemblage, how shifting roles and responsibilities are mediated and negotiated, and how they affect conservation-planning practices.

Heritage Management and Urban Governance

To manage urban heritage more comprehensively, various national and international organisations have argued for the further and better integration of heritage management and urban planning (e.g. English Heritage, 2008; UNESCO, 2011). Conservation-planning is seen as one of the tools to facilitate this integration. Historically conservation-planning was seen as a way to preserve the urban character and fabric of the past for future generations, through protecting certain tangible and aesthetic dimensions of the historic environment. Heritage was to be protected as a repository of historical and cultural value, rather than to perform any wider social or economic role (Pendlebury & Strange, 2011). The call for integration proposes a reframing of conservation as the ‘management of change’, as a practice that is guiding as well as “adding value” to and through (urban) transformation (Veldpaus, 2015, pp. 19–23). Moreover, heritage is now more commonly understood as a way of enacting or mobilising the past in the present. This discourse on heritage defines and positions conservation as a practice that is, on the one hand, using a dematerialised ‘value-centred’ conceptualisation of heritage, in which value can be retained while material dimensions disappear (see for example Park Hill case as discussed in Pendlebury, 2013) and, on the other hand, a practice in which heritage is supposed to create social, cultural, ecological, and economic gain (Hall, 1999; Kisić, 2017, Tolia-Kelly et al., 2017). Thus, the practice of conservation-planning as well as the role of heritage within it is changing. This reconceptualization recognises the empirical reality that heritage has acquired new roles over the past half century. Heritage has for long been used to affirm or reject national identity, class structures, and hegemonic cultures. More recently it has been used as a post-modern liberal critique of traditionalism and conservatism, and a means of performing diversity and inclusivity. At the same time it has been pushed as a latent economic commodity to be exploited (Pendlebury & Veldpaus, 2018). Those additional uses of the heritage will likely further limit, simplify, and steer how, and how much, cultural values are mobilised. We argue that the felt need to exploit heritage in an urban context, is partly rooted in the ongoing integration of urban planning and heritage management. In the conservation-planning assemblage, as Pendlebury (2013) discusses, the heritage concept is (re)framed to work for wider planning objectives. Heritage in this assemblage needs to enact not just its (hegemonic) cultural worth, but also perform other roles. In the context of England he shows it needs to demonstrate its compatibility with existing modes of property-based economic development. To retain legitimacy in a planning context with a strong growth agenda, heritage cannot be seen to block or even be neutral towards economic development; it has to facilitate and stimulate it. Consequently, institutional bodies such as Historic England and UNESCO frame heritage as an active and positive agent of change in the process of urban development, to emphasise the fact that in addition to its economic prospects, heritage can enhance quality of life, provide a sustainable mode of development, sustain a local connectedness, and foster local character and traditional approaches in a globalising world. Thus it has become normalised that heritage is used as a vehicle for change, with an assumption that it makes a positive contribution to urban and socio-economic development. Framing heritage in this

3 way, however, affects the way it is managed through conservation planning, and it also makes it difficult to challenge its meaning, or discuss its multiple meanings. Indeed, it usually reinforces messages about the “goodness” of heritage as part of it making a positive impact, whether in terms of well-being, tourism, house prices or other economic indices. As argued by many (e.g. Veldpaus & Pendlebury, 2017; Madgin, Webb, Ruiz, & Snelson, 2018; Sinclair-Chapman, 2018) this often leads to a convenient forgetting of less ’useful’ histories and heritage, and subsequently its symbolic meanings. Moreover, other consequences of the process of instrumentalising heritage, such as gentrification, are de-problemitised or even celebrated (Beeksma and Cesari, 2018).

Conservation Planning: Changing Practices

The British conservation-planning system evolved in the period after the Second World War, albeit with heritage protection initially carrying little weight as a planning objective. The 1967 Civic Amenities Act enabled local authorities to designate conservation areas, explicitly starting the process of a formal integration of heritage management and urban planning. By the middle of the 1970s the principal legal instruments of heritage protection in England existing today had been established. Regulation and policy matured and tightened and the development of a greater sense of the use of ‘heritage-led’ conservation led to new, more economically instrumental relationships. The instrumental role of, and approach to, heritage in UK planning policy and heritage management practices became firmly established as, for example, displayed in the ‘constructive conservation’ principles developed by English Heritage (now Historic England) (English Heritage, 2008; Pendlebury, 2015). At first sight, the principal statutory processes of conservation planning haven’t changed much over the last decade. The 2012 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) consolidated a raft of previous policy documents, including for the historic environment (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2012), and essentially continued the ‘constructive conservation’ principles. In determining applications, it states that decision-makers are required to consider whether what is proposed constitutes ‘less than substantial harm to the significance of a designated heritage asset’ ‘weighed against the public benefits of the proposal’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2012, para. 134; Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, 2019, para. 196). There is no definition of ‘less than substantial harm’, and the weighing and interpretation of this clause in the local context become key.1 This changes the terms of discretionary decision- making in the conservation-planning system and can, as we will discuss below, have a significant influence on how conservation planning is done in practice.

1 The project was developed within the framework of the 2012 NPPF, so we use this for the paper. The recently published NPPF 2019 remains broadly unchanged.

Conservation, Austerity and Partnerships

Whilst partnership working isn’t new to urban governance or to conservation-planning (Davoudi, 1995; Pendlebury, 2002), it has intensified and changed in nature in the austere times since the 2008 economic crisis (Janssen-Jansen & van der Veen, 2017). Previously partnerships were typically set up and led by the public-sector under the ‘New Public Management’ wave of making the public sector more competitive, accountable, efficient and entrepreneurial (Cook, 2009). BIDs such as NE1, have frequently become partners in many governance arrangements within English historic urban cores. Particularly since the 2011 Localism Act, they have been positioned as localism delivery mechanisms in England (Ward & Cook, 2017), with an active role in producing space, delivering public services, and stimulating economic growth. This enhanced role in urban governance has been criticised as their accountability remains limited to levy-paying business owners only, and their delivery areas are delineated (De Magalhães, 2014; Shaw, 2015; De Magalhães & Freire Trigo, 2017b)2. However, the number of city centre BIDs continues to grow (Turner, 2017, chap. 3) and as research for Historic England (Trends Business Research et al., 2016) shows, more than 50 percent of English BIDs now see heritage as highly important to achieving their objectives. We argue that such urban governance arrangements are moving towards what Rex (2018) calls ‘other-than-public’ forms of management of urban processes, places, or assets. She defines these ‘other-than-public’ forms of management as those that are not public-sector led, but still use a language of affinity with public sector ethics, ideals, and ambitions. This can be considered as part of a wider shift from government to governance, rooted in long and ongoing process of local government becoming, as Healey already identified in 1995, “merely one of many actors in the governance arena, competing for control of agendas and access to resources” (1995, p. 5). The UK Coalition Government (2010-2015) decided austerity, public sector reform, and further deregulation were the means to deal with the 2008 financial crisis, following the oversimplified logic of “Bailing led to debt. Debt led to crisis. Crisis led to austerity” (Blyth, 2013, p. 146). Public austerity was portrayed both as the necessary and the only possible response and solution. Extensive cuts to public services and local authorities were at the forefront of these austerity measures. Local government budgets specifically related to planning and development, housing, and culture were cut by over 40 percent on average between 2010 and 2016 (Smith et al., 2016). Local authority staffing resources of conservation specialists has fallen by over 35 percent between 2006 and 2016 (Reilly, 2016). A context of ‘austerity urbanism’ and ‘austerity localism’ has effectively incapacitated the local state in many instances (Featherstone, Ince, Mackinnon, Strauss, & Cumbers, 2012; Peck, 2012). Local authorities are required to simultaneously deliver austerity and growth agendas.

2 As normal for English BIDs, NE1 is funded by a compulsory additional levy on property tax (business rates). In 2018 NE1 secured its third five-year term (2019-2024) by the required vote of local business (NE1, 2018b).

Moreover, austerity measures have been used as tools to reform relations between the national and local state, and redistribute roles and responsibilities (Davies & Blanco, 2017; Hastings, Bailey, Bramley, & Gannon, 2017), including the mechanisms through which the local state is financed. For example, the Business Rates Retention Scheme introduced in 2013–14 shifts local authority funding from central subvention to locally raised revenue, providing a strong local incentive to be pro- development and pro-business and, in the process, intensifying inter-local competition (Smith et al., 2016; Smith, Phillips, & Simpson, 2018). “By 2020, Government funding to the city will have fallen by £282 million – cuts equating to £268 per person in Newcastle, compared to an average of £131 per person in England” (Newcastle City Council, 2017). Austerity is an all-consuming issue in Newcastle, a city hit disproportionally hard by the reform of local state financing. As Raynor (2017) makes tangible through her work on austerity, it leaves atmospheric and material traces that reach far beyond reduced budgets, both at a personal and institutional level. This is also true for conservation-planning. Research shows that austerity tends to necessitate evidencing viability and profitability before any social or cultural benefits are considered (Lennox, 2016). For example, Lagerqvist, (2016) showed that it in Ireland, austerity led to heritage experts in local authorities being marginalised and the content of their work is transferred to others. The reduced capacity within local authorities as a result of austerity measures, leads to push for a more efficient, effective and delivery-oriented system that facilitates urban development (Waterhout, Othengrafen, & Sykes, 2013). This, in combination with the created necessity for growth, tends to produce a renewed but very limited legitimacy for planning and planners; they are important as long as they can perform a facilitative, effective, speedy, growth framework (Allmendinger & Haughton, 2013). Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly likely that urban partnership arrangements, as well as the spaces they address, are managed by private or other-than- public organisations rather than local authorities, and as such urban governance becomes more privatised and contractualised (De Magalhães & Freire Trigo, 2017a; Janssen-Jansen & van der Veen, 2017). This then also suggests that not just the content, as argued by Lagerqvist (2016), but also the control of governance process is, at least in part, transferred to others. So, whilst statutory frameworks are ostensibly little changed, the increased room for discretion in combination with austerity has left its traces in conservation-planning practices and processes. We will now explore these changes in more detail through the Bigg Market case study.

Revamping the Bigg Market

What makes the Bigg Market project different both from other heritage-led projects in Newcastle, and from other Townscape Heritage HLF (recently renamed NHLF, National Heritage Lottery Fund) funded projects, is that it is being taken forward by NE1 Ltd. The project is explicitly heritage-led, and largely funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Townscape Heritage (TH) programme (Heritage Lottery Fund, 2017). HLF is providing £1.6m of grant funding with principal match funding contributions from NE1 (£250,000), Newcastle City Council (£300,000) and property

6 owners (estimated c. £775,000). Most of the HLF money will be allocated to a public realm project and façade restoration; the former commenced in May 2018 (NE1, 2018a). The remainder of the money will be spent on a range of activities and engagements, around training, education and skill- building. The restoration of façades and shopfronts and the restoration of a former male public toilets, an impressive underground structure in the public realm, will help to ‘use the area’s fantastic, currently undervalued, heritage to anchor an economic uplift’ (NE1, 2016, p. 3). Owners and tenants have to submit their project plans to NE1 and if approved they will receive a grant covering a significant percentage (up to 70 percent) of the costs of the work, as well as support on listed building consent applications, and joint procurement of services. Research undertaken in 2000 and 2001 (Hollands & Chatterton, 2002) identified several challenges for the Bigg Market area that have not been solved since: under-investment, lingering perceptions of violence and consumers moving elsewhere in search of more ‘sophisticated’ nights out. These enduring perceptions are evident in recent policy documents and in our interviews. A public realm audit in 2010 classified the area as a priority area for improvements of public space (Newcastle City Council, 2010a) and the 2010-2030 strategic planning framework ‘Core Strategy and Urban Core Plan’ (Newcastle City Council & Gateshead Council, 2015) reiterates this. Interviewees describe the Bigg Market’s daytime character as tired, lonely, quiet, fractured, and a place you pass by, and its night-time atmosphere as lively, boorish, boisterous, but also run-down and no longer trendy. Moreover, it is seen as commercially-driven space that creates a significant pressure on the public sector to manage the excesses of the night-time economy, ranging from ambulance and police services, to cleansing and maintenance. Unsurprisingly, NE1’s aspiration for Bigg Market is for investment to façades and shopfronts, combined with public space improvements, to lead to increased day-time use of the area, a snowball in confidence and owners of other buildings improving their property. The redesign of the public space is aimed to drive up footfall by ‘creating a sense of destination’, by introducing steps across the slope, and as a result stimulating increased use of public space for outside seating (pavement cafes) and market use. In meetings on various occasions, the desired character was described as “a more European square”. While the broad pattern of land-use is not necessarily expected to change, the specific nature of venues is expected over time to move away from what are now described as ‘tacky bars’ and towards a ‘classier’ offer, similar to neighbouring streets. The redesign, especially the steps, also means the police and medical services will have to find a new base to manage the night-time economy, thus removing negative signifiers of the drinking culture.

New governance arrangements in the face of austerity

Discussing their experiences of recent conservation-planning practice in Newcastle, the interviewees confirmed the view that the NPPF enabled the potential for a more flexible planning framework, which allows for a “smoother process”, but also for “more opportunity for developers to argue for change”. Perhaps surprisingly, our interviewees tended to see this in positive terms; “That is

7 probably overall good thing if you subscribe to the concept of constructive conservation, where conservation isn’t about preventing things it's about moving heritage forward then the NPPF is a good thing” (Expert Interview NECT, 2016). However, equally they felt that austerity, directly visible in diminished capacity and resources especially in the conservation team of Newcastle City Council, had affected practice. A member of the Urban Design and Conservation team elaborates: “Over the last, say five years our work has become much more reactive than proactive, […] we have got to a point where applications for changes in conservation areas we only involve ourselves if they are quite substantial and serious, we leave dealing with more day-to-day changes in conservation areas just with the planning officers.” There is a higher threshold for issues to become significant and an “active discouragement of being too precious about the historic environment” at the cost of the public benefit as “it’s about keeping the city going, about getting jobs and development, and, doing the old sort of conservation thing is like ‘nope, can’t do that’”. Consent regimes have become lighter touch as a result, with a push to “manage schemes rather than go through a great bureaucratic process to get listed building consent”, especially if it is a change which doesn’t materially affect the character of the building or site, and this is considered as “a little bit more risky” but is also “gets more done” (Expert Interview NCC, 2016). All interviewees reiterated that the role of local state has changed from leading and managing heritage projects to facilitating and encouraging others to do so. This is also changing the nature of the work, as local authority officers feel they now determine what they are ‘prepared to allow’ rather than what they ‘wish to see’. The budget cuts ensure that the role of the local authority is now at best a ‘critical facilitator’. This was initially framed in a narrative of loss. The pre-2008 local authority conservation team was portrayed as expanding and taking opportunities, being proactive, putting conservation area management plans and conservation area character statements in place, actively developing a local list and modernizing historic environment records, developing programmes of interpretation, a well maintained website and so on. The team has more than halved in size in the years post-2008 with the consequence that much of this activity has slowly disappeared and in 2016 we were told “we have to be focused on to the bread and butter, the core activities which is basically listed building consents and conservation area applications, and even that has now changed, as we very much focus on the designated heritage assets” (Expert Interview NCC, 2016). Subsequently this feeling of powerlessness eased as the conservation team recovered and grew (albeit not to its pre-2008 size), and regained a feeling of legitimacy and ‘being needed’ as part of the growth agenda of the City; “if you can’t get things through the planning system then you’re almost encouraging that spiral of decline […] you’ve got to have a planning system which is working” (Expert Interview NCC, 2017). Thus the conservation team now feel crucial to the development process, but have also internalised the idea that their job is to efficiently facilitate development. The City’s conservation team are generally happy that someone else is picking up where they lack capacity. Indeed, local authority officers questioned whether they would be best positioned to deliver Bigg Market in this new context; “[…] maybe their [NE1] approach is better in that respect, that

8 sort of hard-nosed commercial approach actually might be more effective long term than actually investing in more conservation based approaches to individual buildings.’ (Expert Interview NCC, 2016). Whilst the Bigg Market project is a heritage-focussed scheme using heritage funding, economic viability comes first. Interviews with NE1 (Expert Interview NE1, 2016, 2017a) show that the combination of the run-down state of the area, the lack of resources at local government level and the need for economic development is precisely why they decided to develop this project. As a BID company, NE1 aim is to make this inner-city location more attractive and profitable. They know they can use heritage, and heritage funding, for this goal as well as for wider city-branding, but are also acutely aware of their lack of experience in the heritage field and they have limited their focus to the public realm and the building frontages facing on to the Bigg Market. They are not addressing the more complex issue of the medieval morphology of chares and lanes behind these frontages, making the process of ‘losing control’ less risky in the eyes of the local authority. Whilst NE1 have assumed the lead from the City Council, at the same time it has not been a straightforward substitution of roles. Thus, NE1 are now responsible for some responsibilities traditionally exercised by local government (for example, capital public realm improvements and negotiating with building owners about enhancements and grants), but not others (for example, long term maintenance, wider community engagement in the planning process and, indeed, regulation). Moreover, NE1’s access to, and understanding of the role of other local authority departments in the process of conservation-planning, such as those responsible for transport and traffic, is limited. A BID taking the lead on a TH scheme was also new for the funder, HLF, who effectively asked NE1 to act as if it were a local authority, which also caused issues in the process. For example, the TH scheme requires a formally adopted planning policy framework. This didn’t exist, leading NE1 to commission a third sector organisation, the North of England Civic Trust (NECT), to produce a Management Plan, but only for this particular section of the Central Conservation Area. Effectively, the NECT consultant explains, they wrote a policy document “which the council doesn't really want... They didn’t ask for this document. They like it, but that’s kind of by the by. They don’t know how to adopt it, because they never had this kind of document before” (Expert Interview NECT, 2016). Changes to the roles and responsibilities have been challenged by the access to funding as well as institutional understanding of what used to be internal local authority procedures around conservation-planning. Further issues were raised in granting consent for the public realm scheme commissioned by NE1. Local authority conservation officers were put in a position where despite reservations over the detailed design, refusal of the application would have been difficult. Not only had the City Council already committed match-funding to the project, refusing consent would mean the HLF bid would be rejected, and subsequently Newcastle would miss out on a multimillion-pound investment in its historic environment. Furthermore, the local planning authority didn’t have a strong policy basis in NPPF to resist the proposal, as it determines that a “development proposal will lead to less than substantial harm to the significance of a designated heritage asset, this harm should be weighed

9 against the public benefits of the proposal, including securing its optimum viable use” (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2012, para. 134). In the case of the Bigg Market the conservation officer considered the scheme acceptable, despite causing ‘less than substantial’ harm to the area which is “outweighed by the public benefits of the scheme and general enhancement of the space” (Online Planning Application Comments by Newcastle City Council Conservation Officer, 2016). Substantiating the case for public benefit was key in progressing the scheme. The officer report on the planning application (dd. 22 July 2016) notes how some design improvements were sought and urging NE1 to “further justify the proposed scheme in relation to the identified public benefits, assessment of the scheme against the character and appearance of the conservation area as outlined in the updated section of the character statement […] and illustrate the design options considered in the development of the scheme.” In essence this is a request for better argumentation and illustration of the proposal rather than asking for changes to the substance of the plan. Within Newcastle there is a certain level of trust between the principal actors which means the project is felt to be a reasonably safe ‘practice run’ for a new way of working. That changes in governance arrangements are working out reasonably well is dependent upon good-will, pre-existing relations and effective communication. Throughout the process, partnership working and austerity are reinforcing each other and the roles of the different actors are visibly shifting. Austerity has forced a change in roles and responsibilities, but access, knowledge and experience have not moved in the same way.

Selecting ‘useful’ heritage narratives

NE1 officers have been charmed by the heritage of the Bigg Market and show a genuine interest in seeing the buildings in a better state of conservation. Ultimately though the heritage, and its funding, are a vehicle for economic development. As an organisation, NE1 has a clear narrative about how it values this heritage, seeing an opportunity to capitalize on a lingering sense of place linked to its historic feel. The heritage is used to provide “an authenticity, credibility, to brand and position a space. So that’s absolutely why we approached the HLF for Bigg Market” […] “We’ll help businesses investing in those buildings, protecting the heritage for future generations because there is a commercial viability to doing that.[…] That will create a sense of place for the Bigg Market” (Expert Interview NE1, 2017b). Or as the Director of NE1 states “Today’s consumer is very market savvy and if a brand is constructed from scratch they are suspicious, using heritage brings credibility and authenticity to the offer […] this gives depth, sincerity and credibility to the brand. Heritage shouldn't be seen as just bricks and rafters, isolated from its context, geography and society, it is about living places. Heritage has a huge part in the narrative and provides context for places” (BID director as quoted in: Historic England, 2016). NE1 selectively uses and mobilises Bigg Market’s tangible and intangible heritage, and heritage funding, to use and produce Bigg Market’s viability and character. Next to supporting the capital

10 works on buildings they are, for example, undertaking a ‘memories of Bigg Market’ film project (Ayre, 2019). Whilst the majority of the HLF money will go to tangible heritage assets, the intangible heritage of Bigg Market is also used to validate the project. It ‘authenticates the brand’, and ‘provides a narrative’, it invokes nostalgia for a generation that used to go there, whilst continuing a tradition. As the funder, HLF requires NE1 to develop an activities plan, focussing on impact beyond material changes, by organising events and engagement activities. The engagement activities are focussed on creating a more inclusive and accessible space, and educating people about and engaging them in aspects of the heritage of Bigg Market, especially under-represented groups, such as (regional) tourists, an older demographic and families. Whilst not actively displaced, it is likely that, if successful, the lower-end bars, and thus their clientele, will be priced out of the area over time. So as the space becomes more inclusive, specific groups will be pushed out, despite this drinking culture being part of the heritage capitalized upon. Stimulating the place brand is, at least in part, based upon a nostalgia for the Bigg Market and the party-city feel, while simultaneously moving away from the associated ‘vertical drinking’ culture, effectively by ‘classing it up’. With the clear aim of the coordinated commodification of the Bigg Market as a heritage ensemble, neatly covered by a story about heritage and inclusivity, the results of the process can easily be framed in a ‘heritage does good things’. While the Bigg Market project does instrumentalise and commodify the heritage, pushing out ‘less desirable’ users as well as negative signifiers seems to be considered acceptable because the project aims to reduce the high levels of (upper floor) vacancy, as well as introduce ‘nicer’ use. This is supported by a decade long policy discourse focussing on getting designated heritage back into use, weighing heritage value against public benefit in NPPF (2012), and also by austerity, and in particular increasing returns on business rates. The City Council and the BID will directly gain from bringing buildings back into economic use.3 So on the one hand, the project is legitimized using the inclusivity discourse of heritage agencies, with arguments of public benefit and accessibility. On the other, it ignores what this process also does; gentrification, moving the undesirable aspects elsewhere, selecting only those heritage narratives that are ‘useful’ for NE1’s aims. This is not to say that the local authority would have advanced a significantly different programme. However, it has become even more difficult to challenge these practices, imagine alternative futures for the uses of the heritage, or hold anyone to account.

Conservation as vehicle for development

In this paper we have shown that, within the conservation-planning assemblage of the Bigg Market project, the roles and responsibilities for heritage management have changed, whilst institutional

3 On listed buildings that are not in use, the owners do not pay rates

11 access and knowledge and professional experience did not automatically move in the same way. The influence an organisation such as a BID may have is mediated by local planning policies and practices. However, when a BID takes the lead in a multi-million pound heritage-led refurbishment of a central public space and its surrounding buildings, the wider conservation-planning assemblage is bound to change shape. Power relations shift, as does the agency of heritage, heritage management, and heritage funding within policy and procedures. The Bigg Market case illustrates how heritage and conservation planning in England have become ever more engrained within a neoliberal discourse, focussed upon economic performance and competitiveness, while enacting its role as vehicle for development. The principal actors consider the new spatial management arrangement that emerges generally more effective. The local authority have become a critical facilitator within this process, which has to do with the lack of capacity and resources, but also relates to a perceived lack of skills. Heritage practitioners have assimilated the values of the new governance reality. This situation is reinforced by the combined force of austerity and the increased room for discretion in planning policy. There are critical issues about the management of heritage embedded within seemingly innocuous phrases such as ‘less than substantial harm’, combined with a diminished capacity for heritage management, which may have profound long-term implications for the built environment. Equally, a renewed, somewhat enhanced capacity within the local authority does not necessarily undo these newly developed practices. Heritage officers have incorporated new practices and understandings of institutional arrangements, and absorbed them into daily routines. The focus of conservation-planning in this new reality is not protecting heritage, nor managing change; it is viable continued use. Conservation-planning, it seems, is becoming the process of negotiating the instrumentalisation and exploitation of heritage. As such the role of heritage in the conservation-planning assemblage is changing. It needs to be useful, in terms of new use and in stimulating development and economic growth. Within the British planning system there is considerable potential scope for decision-makers to use discretion in interpreting and implementing policy. However, in practice austerity and emphasis upon the economic utility of heritage negate the deployment of possible directions such discretion might take. As the role of heritage is to deliver economic growth, authenticate development and create a brand, the possibility to enact its cultural agency is constrained, also closing down its capacity to be a space for debate or a platform for other voices. This makes an ethical debate on ‘to what end heritage is a means’ more crucial than ever.

References

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